Power BI

Power BI is Microsoft’s hosted business intelligence (BI) service and the focus for most of the company’s BI development. The service provides an Internet-based platform for sharing refreshable reports among users, includes refreshable access to on-premises data, has several interactive features for self-service analysis, and introduces a desktop report design tool. An update of the Power BI service in July 2015 retired the previous service, removed the dependency on SharePoint Online and Excel, and delivered a new Web portal and mobile applications. The service also received updated mobile applications and improvements to the desktop report designer, and it introduced enterprise-level controls for connecting the service to on-premises data sources.

Power BI Overview

Power BI is Microsoft’s BI product family that enables customers to share refreshable reports among users. It includes refreshable access to on-premises data and has several interactive features for self-service analysis. For most organizations, the service is likely less expensive than a remotely accessible on-premises BI solution.